Vale had a small Jeep, fully electrical. The Partials maintained a nuclear power plant that supplied more than enough power—enough that Morgan had siphoned it for years while in exile, powering her secret laboratory. The drive to the old college was short, and when they arrived they found the place swarming with soldiers, far more than a single recon team could account for. Vale swore and climbed out of the Jeep.

“Report,” he said firmly, and the link carried the full weight of his authority. The sergeant in charge was talking almost before she turned to face him.

“Sergeant Audra, sir.” She saluted. “We found the human insurgent approximately twenty minutes ago. She attempted to activate her cargo when she saw us, and we were forced to incapacitate her.”

“You shot her?” asked Vinci.

“She’s wounded but alive,” said Audra. “Our medic expired last year, but we’ve done our best to stabilize her.”

Vale nodded; the medics had been among the first to be produced, due to their more advanced training requirements, and thus had been some of the first to die. He looked pointedly at the swarm of soldiers, feeling their nervous energy crackle across the link; they were scared. “Why the crowd?”

“Don’t worry, sir, they all have clearance. We’re all teams Commander Vinci organized.” She hesitated, and Vale felt another burst of nervous fear. “When we realized what her cargo was, sir, we thought it was wise to bring in extra security.”

Vale ground his teeth in frustration; the other recon teams did, technically, have clearance, but he’d have preferred if the team that found her were the only team to know what she’d been carrying. “Take me to see it.”

The sergeant led Vale and Vinci into the main college building, where several soldiers in tech uniforms were milling around just as nervously as the scouts outside. “We’ve been using this facility for weeks,” said Audra, “trying to get the satellite feeds up and working again. That’s how we found her—she was farther north, trying to sneak in through a residential neighborhood, but her movement showed up on a scan from the satellites, and we brought her here, like I said, for security. We think she probably came up the river and managed to bypass our patrols.”

“I used to lead a security checkpoint in Tarrytown,” said Vinci. “Was nobody there?”

“I understand that checkpoint’s been vacant since you abandoned it and joined the humans,” said the sergeant, adding a strictly formal “Sir.”

Vinci’s irritation steamed across the link, but Vale steered the conversation in another direction before it could escalate. “What do you mean that you found her by satellite?” he asked. “We haven’t had satellite uplinks working since the Break.”